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Feb 29 2016

# London Grip New Poetry – Spring 2016

*

This issue of London Grip New Poetry features new poems by:

*Eve Pearce *Phil Kirby *P A Levy *Gareth Culshaw *Grant Tarbard *Robert Nisbet
*Katherine Gallagher *Shadwell Smith *John Harvey *David Flynn *Utsav Kaushik
*Norbert Hirschhorn * Jared Carter *Caroline Natzler *Elizabeth Smither *Greg Freeman
*Cal Freeman *Robert Etty *Mark Carson *Jack Houston *Clive Gresswell *Adrian Green
*Jane Frank *Ian C Smith *Ed Mycue *Yuan Changming

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors

A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be obtained at LG new poetry Spring 2016

Please send submissions to poetry@londongrip.co.uk, enclosing no more than three poems and a brief, 2-3 line, biography

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Image: Andante 1, 1980 © 2015 Bridget Riley.

Editorial

Your editor has recently been interviewed for an American on-line literary magazine. The interview has not yet appeared, but here’s the gist of our answer to an interesting question about what we look for in contributions to London Grip. (Of course we do try to avoid hard-and-fast rules because a good poem should be able to surprise us into liking something we might not have expected to like.) A poem accepted for London Grip is more likely to be a narrative involving people than a meditation about ‘nature’; it will probably display some structure rather than being loose and free-form. It is likely to feature some surprising images and metaphors but will also tend to understatement rather than extravagant or clichéd poetic language. We like work which displays a sense of humour; we enjoy ekphrastic poetry (as exemplified by Shadwell Smith and John Harvey in this issue); and we are sympathetic to political poetry that is neither manifesto nor rant. (Readers may care to check how much of the current issue falls outside these guidelines …)

There are a few things that we do not care for in submissions. Two common ‘errors’ are: sending in too many poems at once (we ask for no more than three); and not reading the magazine before submitting and hence offering work that is either wildly experimental or ponderously old-fashioned. It does not create a good impression to send in poems without any kind of covering letter and perhaps a short CV. (On the other hand, a lengthy and boastful biographical essay does not create a good impression either!)

The above is offered by way of friendly advice; and the most important thing we have to say to our contributors is that we are mightily grateful to them for keeping London Grip New Poetry in business.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs

http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/

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***

    Eve Pearce: Lost

    First of all I lost my heart.
    When he went I lost my mind
    then my liberty – my shoes, my belt –
    no belts allowed in the asylum –
    then my appetite went.
    (I’d lost my own clothes of course)
    lost weight, lost sense of time.
    Eventually they let me out.

    On the first day I lost my drugs,
    wandered in here, having lost my way,
    my sense of direction.
    They happened to need a dishwasher,
    thought I’d come about the job.
    I nodded when they asked me,
    having lost my voice.
    No, since you ask, I haven’t lost hope.

Eve Pearce has been an actress for over sixty years. She started to write poetry at the age of seventy and has a pamphlet, Woman In Winter, published by Hearing Eye in 2007, and a Collected Poems – Capturing Snowflakes (Greenheart Press 2012)
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***

    Phil Kirby: Messages

    We imagined your bottled message –
    name, address, ‘write back’ request –

    making landfall on a distant shore:
    Scandinavia at first, then further still,

    where some wide-eyed fumbling child
    would marvel at your note having

    bested tides, survived the roil and spume
    to fetch up in the foam at their astonished feet.

    Sunlight on the water scattering fool’s gold
    through the waves, we wondered

    if the world might change when others
    spread the news that someone somewhere

    had cast adrift a string of words encased
    in plastic, like a sea-purse full of inky pearls.

    The morning when that letter came
    for you, we stood amazed and hung

    on every revelation, learning how
    your bottle had beached on a coast

    no more than six miles from the place
    where we stood and hoped and threw it in.

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***

    Phil Kirby: ‘Light Blue’

    Early evening, somewhere in between
    his home-from-work and sunset,
    the summer running and the house –
    its rooms – thickening to an early dusk,
    a break from chores becomes a treasured time
    because he sits back in a chair
    against a gauzy scarf of hers and,

    as if he’s brushed against or bruised
    some heady scented garden plant
    or scratched the zest of citrus fruit,
    releases perfume to the air; so strong
    she could be standing there, the music
    of her battered silver bangles briefly
    halted while his other senses take her in.

Originally from Chingford, Phil Kirby currently lives and works in Gloucestershire. He has run Waldean Press, been an East Midlands Arts ‘New Voice’ and bursary recipient, has had several pamphlets published and his first full collection, Watermarks from Arrowhead Press, came out in 2009. More at his website: www.waldeanpress.co.uk. He can also be followed on Twitter: @pkk31
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***

    P.A. Levy: Moving To Cemetery Road

    the room had stopped breathing
    the boiler switched off then
    respectfully
    the windows were closed
    amen

    an estate agent
    talking of the market in an unhealthy
    state with the property requiring
    drastic refurbishment
    signed the contract at 11.08
    all registered in his blackberry

    a surveyor found the outer-skin
    the brickwork the roof the guttering
    all sound
    but referred the interior to a specialist
    he suspected something growing in the living
    room that would need urgent treatment

    we all gathered in the porch to ceremoniously
    close the door for the last time
    forwarding address
    carved in stone

Born East London but now residing amongst the hedge mumblers of rural Suffolk, P.A.Levy has been published in many magazines, from A cappella Zoo to Zygote In My Coffee and stations in-between. He is also a founding member of the Clueless Collective and can be found loitering on page corners and wearing hoodies at www.cluelesscollective.co.uk
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***

    Gareth Culshaw: On Passing A Farm While On A Train

    Rusting harrow lying still
    over used pallets and broken slats,
    tyres, tyres, tyres, tyres, tyres
    two wandering crows
    stack of old bricks webbed and mossed
    lichen crawling yearly along fence rail
    taking over what you know.
    a boot flung away
    unused chicken wire, still rolled tight
    ‘Not got round to it’

    hernia hill waiting to pop
    arthritis just waiting round the corner

    two tractors, one in use other not.
    jobs building up,
    barb wire hanging, logs need chopping
    wheelbarrow full
    farmers grip loosening

    leave it till the next life.
    leave it for now

Gareth Culshaw is a published poet with various magazines across the UK. He loves Snowdonia and having a good read.
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***

    Grant Tarbard: A Walk Through the Shadows

    This loam, a border to a world beyond
    myself, a document of thin skip rats,
    lilting alehouse brawling, kicking your door in
    with a drooping fag end of blazing ash.
    Them, a beak of tongues gossip like sea beasts
    echoing on the black waistcoat of cobbles.
    Their children buzzed like a hive round and round
    they go, looping the girl that wouldn't be kissed.
    There, a majesty of burrow holes with
    every colour of empty beer bottle
    swaying from the branches like hanged witches,
    TV antennae from every house jut
    out like the crucified thin arms of Christ;
    she walks through the shadows, her hand in mine.

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***

    Grant Tarbard: Poets

    Poets
    have Aga fires
    for hearts and a penny
    on the chest of drawers for the
    meter.

Grant Tarbard is internationally published. His chapbook Yellow Wolf, published by WK Press, is available now.
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***

    Robert Nisbet: First Snow

    No longer scuffed quotidian, the town, the shops,
    the terraces, coated now, pristine in promise.
    Warm knots of conversationalists.
    Word came back by hearsay’s pigeon:
    the jams of traffic on the Milford road
    (solid, so Rhyssie’d heard); somebody said
    the Cartlett brook had frozen.

    The story of the pensioner in Prendergast
    who’d fallen, broken a leg. (Poor soul).
    But later we heard it was a younger man,
    just slipped, messing about,
    went over on his arse.

    People trekked the crunched half-miles
    to ferry provender. Cars swerved in driveways.
    Wellies and huzzahs. Kids slid.
    We heaved great breaths of frost
    for the tang of it. For hours,
    the crystals were lit by midday sun,

    until at three the thaw began
    and the afternoon died on us, in banks of grey.

Robert Nisbet taught creative writing in Trinity College, Carmarthen, where he also acted as professor to exchange students from the Central College of Iowa. He has over 200 poems published in Britain, including The North and The Frogmore Papers, and publications in the USA in Main Street Rag, San Pedro River Review, Provo Canyon Review and Constellations.
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***

    Katherine Gallagher: The Mountain

    On sunny days, the mountain turns quite blue,
    takes on the azure sparkle of the sky –
    always a place to dream of coming to,

    to feel that snowy-crunch beneath your shoe,
    or soar across a piste that’s powder-dry.
    On sunny days, the mountain turns quite blue –

    you feel the silence is in love with you,
    invites a quietude no one can buy
    in this wild place you dream of coming to.

    The snow melts earlier now, the view
    quite changed, and not so lovely to the eye;
    on sunny days, the mountain turns quite blue.

    It’s clear that tales of acid rain are true
    as ragged trees suggest they’ll surely die
    in this wild place you dream of coming to.

    Its hazy beauty strangely keeps it new,
    helps you forget the damage or the why.
    On sunny days, the mountain turns quite blue   ?
    this special place you dream of coming to.

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***

    Katherine Gallagher: Refugees at the Aid Centre

    The tapered fingers of her gaunt hands,
    a version of her child’s . . .
    She caresses him, his fists opening,
    closing, drawing down the sun.

    Her eyes beg, the face of one more parent
    in the queue. She smiles into her hands,
    arms enfolding the child as if
    her carrying will never be over.
    She will keep holding him, offering
    water, milk, a spoonful of rice. . .

    The child, innocent of the fight around him,
    wages his own battle, whimpers,
    sinks into his mother. Another day.

Katherine Gallagher is an Australian-born poet resident in North London. Her most recent collection is Carnival Edge: New & Selected Poems (Arc Publications, 2010). Her next book Acres of Light is due out in 2016.
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***

    Shadwell Smith: A Jungle Queen Takes the Train
    Rote Frau, by Franz Marc (1912)

    When the bricks smashed
    through the windows,
    it was time to leave.

    Her fertile blush
    of buttocks
    was called degenerate;
    the forest where she lived
    pronounced insane.

    They would have burned her
    as a witch
    that grew green hair
    and wore red skin.

    Each leaf
    taken in for questioning:
    And where are the rest
    of your kind?
    The yellow cow?
    The blue horse?

    Every colour
    drained,
    put in jars,
    stored on shelves.

    The Red Woman
    wasn’t governed
    by their machines
    or painted by numbers.

    Laid flat,
    hidden in a sideboard,
    she caught the last train
    out of Erfurt.

Shadwell Smith is a school teacher who lives in Dunstable. His poems have appeared in a number online magazines and he sometimes appears in pubs, clubs and coffee shops reading them.
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***

    John Harvey: Curve
    Bridget Riley: The Curve Paintings 1961-2014, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill: August, 2015
    for Lee Harwood  & for Sarah

    Late summer already
    and the swifts that raced the canyon
    of our suburban street,
    criss-crossing from nest to nest,
    have left swiftly as they arrived.
    Our daughter is in France,
    dreaming of becoming seventeen.

    Out of the blue, news
    Lee Harwood, whose poetry
    I read and re-read
    until I almost believed
    his words were mine
    has died …

    Cast adrift
    we catch the morning train.
    through fields of yellowing wheat
    towards the sea;
    the light oscillating
    on the water’s surface,
    patterning across the painter’s canvas,
    ever moving, iridescent,
    rarely what it seems.

    What are you doing? you asked,
    when, walking beside you, I first
    threaded my fingers through yours.
    Evening, it would have been, the air
    about us urgent, electric,
    my shoulder brushing yours.

    Now the sweet heat of nights
    and insatiable afternoons
    has ripened into this:
    the accidental touch of bodies
    and flustering of hands;
    the lushness of late-flowering
    blackberries, their juices
    sticky rich upon the skin.

    Feet bare on shingle, wearing
    your black dress with its green sash,
    you walk cautiously to the water’s edge
    and stand there looking out:
    the blur of motion on the horizon,
    the far prospect of land;
    the impossibility of leaving.

    Have I ever said I love you and not meant it?
    Yes, but not to you.

    For an instant it’s as if my breath has stopped:
    then you turn and come back to where I’m waiting,
    small shells like keepsakes tight
    in the palm of your hand.

A prolific and award-winning writer of crime fiction, John Harvey is also a dramatist, sometime small press publisher and poet. His New & Selected Poems, Out of Silence, was published by Smith/Doorstop in 2014.
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***

    David Flynn: A Pity

    It's a pity you are glorious.  Sad
    to think you're so grand.  In the morning you
    are the sunrise, night a black dress
    sequined with stars.

    It's so awful you are lovely.  A crime
    you look that way.  Your eyes:  their blue
    makes the sky look faded, cobalt
    seem bland.  You gaze, and stallions run wild.

    I'm depressed that I love you.  Can't sleep
    that you love me too.  Your kiss before bedtime
    makes me flinch with happiness:  lips redder
    than sunset, more liquid than cabernet.

    You'll be my death, from this joy I can't kill,
    an electrocution, strapped to romance.

David Flynn was born in the textile mill company town of Bemis, TN. His jobs have included newspaper reporter, magazine editor and university teacher. He has five degrees and is both a Fulbright Senior Scholar and a Fulbright Senior Specialist with an upcoming grant in Indonesia. His literary publications total more than 180. David Flynn’s writing blog, where he posts a new story and poem every month, is at http://writing-flynn.blogspot.com/ . His web site is at http://www.davidflynnbooks.com/
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    Utsav Kaushik: Leaves

    Leaves
    Rustling outside the window;
    A sound – whispering;
    The wind flirting
    With the sunbeams.

    This calm
    In the scene outside. As if
    As if, it wants to; but can’t.
    It is soothing,
    My mind down and down

    The air
    In which, I feel like gazing on and on.
    A smooth sheet of soft silk
    Suddenly stretched away and gone.

    A kiss
    Leaving a cool impression
    On my lips. Oh if I...
    If I could hover like that kite,
    For hours in this quiet

    And sleep
    On clouds and never look down
    Let the evening pass – living
    This pleasant dream and would never wake
    But then .....

Utsav Kaushik studies English at Zakir Husain Delhi College (Evening), University Of Delhi. He has conducted research in wide areas such as: Literary criticism, 17th-18th Century English Poets (Including Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson and others), Victorian Era, etc. He is currently working on publishing research papers in the field of Post-colonialism. Also, has a deep interest in writing poetry, songs, short story and plays. His poems have been published in the college magazine, entitled Vesper. He has participated in theatre activities at district and state levels.
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***

    Norbert Hirschhorn: The Call

    4:13 by the bedside alarm,
    jangled from a chaotic dream,
    blankets tangled – has someone died?

    A muted voice, echoing,
    one he’d heard before.

    	I know why you’re calling. Who are you?
    	Irrelevant.
    	I’ve tried to be good.
    	You only think you’re good.
    	Everyone deserves to be held.
    	Don’t presume.

    The moon hung over the high-rise opposite,
    frozen like a tombstone.

    	I’m generous, all my friends will tell you.
    	You never bought Big Issue from the homeless person.
    	Stop. Stop. I hate this.
    	I’m sure you do.
    	Who are you?  Is this a nightmare?

    Jagged clouds eroded Orion.

    	Are you prepared?
    	Maybe an angel I’m supposed to wrestle?
    	Throw out my hip, become a cripple?
    	You’re already crippled.
    	Wait! You’re my muse, right? Bringing me a poem?
    	Nothing so pitiful as a failed poet.
    	You make me feel like a worm impaled on a hook of indifference.
    	That’s pathetic.

    A sharp wind blew up, tree limbs beckoned.

    	Please, give me some ease.
    	Not to be had.
    	Then let me ask you something.
    	Go ahead.
    	Why does it take me so long to leave the house?
    	You know, forget this, forget that, recheck the hob,
    	go back for the umbrella…

    	You’re afraid you’ll die.
    	But don’t most people die in bed?
    	Precisely.

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***

    Norbert Hirschhorn: Two Old Men Remembering
    Based on Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber

    An old man in an old century remembered:

    As long as there were no roads, and wolves roamed the forest,
    you had to interrupt a journey at nightfall. Then you had all
    the leisure in the world to recite psalms at the inn, open a book,
    have a good talk. Nowadays you can ride these roads day
    and night, and there is no peace any more.

    An old man in a new century remembers:

    As long as there was no Facebook or Instagram, no Flickr or Twitter,
    no private music listened through earbuds – then you had the leisure
    to recite poetry, meet friends at the pub, read a book, have good talks
    with neighbors, family. Nowadays, you are ridden bareback by these
    doodads, all day, all night. There is no peace any more.

Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero.” He lives in London and Beirut. He has published four collections. His poems have appeared in numerous US/UK publications, several as prize-winning. See his website, www.bertzpoet.com.
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***

    Jared Carter: Shekinah

    He for a minstrel asked, and when
              the minstrel played,
    The Lord’s hand came upon him. Then
              those once afraid

    Were comforted. Wheresover
              they were exiled,
    It went with them. And the river
              was reconciled

    With Canaan’s valley, wherein dwells
              the light, and where
    Rich honey flows, and nothing quells
              the singing there.

Jared Carter’s most recent book is Darkened Rooms of Summer: New and Selected Poems (University of Nebraska Press). He lives in Indiana in the American Middlewest.
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***

    Caroline Natzler: Evening

    Stones balanced like standing eggs
    tender in this slide of golden light

    human high, seem to tilt and multiply
    as you move among them
    on a slope above shaven wheat fields

    you need the shadows of this slant light to see
    worn engravings
    random whorls curled like tongues

    a script no-one can read
    so magic we say, or ritual

    or like the ragbag we sent out to space
    to sign that we are here.

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    Caroline Natzler: Passage

    Each step the body pushes you into
    is the first

    a new scrambling
    new way of being

    you had not been a child before

    yet lives brush at you from the past
    and the long world’s scribbles
    towards different ways of wisdom

    though you have not been old before
    age comes as a familiar.

Caroline Natzler’s collections are Design Fault (Flambard Press 2001), Smart Dust (Grenadine Press 2009), and two smaller ones, Fold (Hearing Eye 2014) and Only (Grenadine Press 2015). Caroline teaches creative writing at the City Lit and runs some free-lance writing workshops.
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***

    Elizabeth Smither: Cat night

    The cats are out by the letterboxes
    at the ends of long driveways
    waiting to see how the night will shape itself.

    Black fur is fading into darkness.
    Stripes into shadows on the paths.
    Only the eyes are growing brighter.

    No need to move yet. Let the heat
    of the concrete paths rise through the paws
    and haunches. Let desire creep out from the flowerbeds

    and hedges. Let the street lights mark
    the great promenade down which love will come
    like black carriages on the Champs-Elysées.

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***

    Elizabeth Smither: Alice and the four horses

    10,000* horses went from our small country.
    Four came back. In her field Alice is thinner
    needing hay and a supplement.

    Her companion is a Shetland pony. A field away
    three alpacas graze like a touring trio
    piano, cello and violin.

    Which animal sleeps standing up? the quiz master
     asks on TV. The choices: lion
    giraffe, elephant. The contestant

    says elephant. Those feet in which umbrellas
    were furled and walking sticks
    forgetting the beautiful fetlocks of a horse.

    Alice, if you are one of the four
    hay is coming, an extra bale
    with field flowers trapped like medals.

    *horses sent from New Zealand in World War I

Elizabeth Smither is working on a new collection of poetry to be called Night Horse. A new short story, Baking Night was recently published on Harvard Review Online.
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***

    Greg Freeman: Liberation, 1945

    To: Private WE Freeman, Recovered
    POW centre, Bombay, Indian Command.
    “Dearest son, After all this long time,

    we are so excited, we hardly know
    what to do. It seems so strange
    to be able to write.”

    So many letters, via War Office,
    Red Cross. When she heard
    he was safe she sent three in a week.

    “Some camps seemed to have fared
    better than others. I still tried
    to think your luck would hold.

    You were missing 15 months
    before I heard you were in Jap hands.
    Mrs Smith heard this June

    that Taffy, as you used to call him,
    died in June 1943. She still hopes
    they have made a mistake.

    We will make it up to you,
    as far as it is in our powers.
    Last year we had a bad hit,

    but we were lucky. The house
    was much damaged, but our furniture
    was safe. Also your piano.

    Do you know I am getting on now,
    63 this birthday. Pop says it does not
    seem true. I do so wonder how you will be

    after all this time in the terrible heat.”
    When he returned there was bunting
    down the street. He hid indoors for days.

Greg Freeman is a former newspaper sub-editor, and now news editor for the poetry website Write Out Loud. His pamphlet collection, Trainspotters, was published by Indigo Dreams in February 2015.
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    Cal Freeman: About Objects

    You wandered around
    looking for books and one
    book found you.

    It had been broken
    and taped over with a false
    chipboard cover.

    Everything that begins
    this broken forges
    itself into something

    we are allowed to say
    about objects.

Cal Freeman, author of Brother of Leaving, is a poet from Detroit, MI. His writing has appeared in many journals including Berfrois, Commonweal, The Paris-American, Birmingham Poetry Review and The Drunken Boat.
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    Robert Etty: A Boy Up A Tree In A Wood In A Book

    A boy once lived up a tree in a wood,
    making hideaways in the elbows of boughs,
    asleep with the pheasants and woken by blackbirds
    and sunbeams beaming through leaves.

    His story I read in a book I took home
    from the splintery-floorboarded village library,
    on summer nights with my sash window open.
    I made sure the book was returned by its due date,

    but kept out on loan the desire it gave me.
    The wish to be the boy in the wood, dew steaming
    off him, feeding on berries and chocolate he’d stored
    and having no truck with school and behaving

    passed into wanting the book in my hand
    (this time noting its title and author), to leaf
    through and track down the spaces at line ends
    that marked me with an X.

Robert Etty‘s latest collection is A Hook in the Milk Shed (Shoestring Press). A selection of his work appears in Something Happens, Sometimes Here: Contemporary Lincolnshire Poetry (Five Leaves)
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***

    Mark Carson: The Frogs

    When the time comes I will lock the front door
    seal the letter box with duct tape reinforced with cheese-head screws.
    I will cancel my subscriptions to the New Scientist and London Review of Books
    so that the dangerous head-high heaps of unread issues threatening my safety
    will stagnate peacefully.

    Slowly the flood of poetry magazines and proceedings of learned bodies
    the Journal of the British Clavichord Society and the British Canoe Union
    not to mention the multiple copies of gardening and wildlife magazines
    will dwindle

    and I will start to process steadily the stacks of unread books
    reading only the first few pages if the content leaves me
    less than totally intrigued.

    Each day I will place items in the blue box for recovery by the authorities
    and I will arrange for regular collection of unattributable supermarket bags
    containing rejected volumes – maybe Oxfam will oblige – and light
    will once again penetrate the upper sash
    of many of the windows.

    If all goes well I will take a day’s holiday once a month when I will read
    nothing, nothing at all, but take a short walk from the back door
    speaking to the tiny frogs which sprinkle the damp grass
    with their joyful leaping.

Mark Carson is an offshore engineer, washed up in Cumbria. He writes about the sea and the land and the emotions in between. His pamphlet, Hove-to is a State of Mind, has been published by Wayleave Press (2015)
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***

    Jack Houston: We Are Local Government

    and we like keys,
    copies of Auden biographies
    with torn plastic covers,

    not the pigeons
    raising their ugly young
    under the eaves of the railway bridges
    hammering at rush hour,

    tea-breaks,
    but not cigarettes
    anymore,

    two tiered
    paper-holders
    one in
    one out,

    health and wellbeing
    initiatives
    aimed at promoting
    the local parks
    and other green spaces,

    not overeating
    too much TV
    or careless lack of exercise
    wearing tracksuits

    but nappuccinos, gravlax
    for breakfast, a Brompton
    to the makers’ market
    and the deli’s cheese –

    we are local government and we like these.

    For more information on nappuccinos visit: http://www.realnappiesforlondon.org.uk/scheme/eventsdiary.php

Jack Houston has published work in Neon, South Bank Poetry, Brittle Star and Ink sweat and tears; forthcoming work in Obsessed With Pipework, The Journal, Interpreter’s House and Shooter. He is a poetry editor at Nutshell Magazine.
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***

    Clive Gresswell: aching lawns
    .
    the british love
    of aching lawns
    stretching out in
    suburban paradises

    aching to gardeners
    the garden cities laze
    criss-crossing patterns
    in the pools of your
    tracing lawns of aching

    the british love to ache
    for you’re in lazy pools
    lazy repossessions hint
    that under the lazy pools
    blood and sinew ache

    the garden cities ache
    paradises ache the british
    love the lazy repossession

    tracing lawns of aching
    paradises ache under
    the british love to garden
    blood and sinew ache now
    all the lazy repossessions

Clive Gresswell is a 57-year-old writer and poet from Luton in Bedfordshire who has just finished his Master’s in Innovative Poetry at the university there. He is a regular at the Shoreditch-based group of poets Writers Forum (New Series) which meets monthly.
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***

    Adrian Green: Autumn leaves

    In a bar glooming
    towards the fall
    there are leaves at the door

    an open Bechstein grand
    and red wine smoothing
    memories of summer,

    a plaintive reed
    quoting the notes
    of My Favourite Things

    in a clarinet interpretation
    of Coltrane’s
    lilting cadenza

    with a tremolo hint
    and rhythm brushed
    on snare and cymbal

    as the drinkers nod and smile
    at the days passing
    through another season.

Adrian Green lives in Southend, Essex, the county where he was born. He has degrees in arts and psychology. His poems have appeared in several magazines and anthologies in the UK and abroad. His first full-length collection Chorus and Coda is available from The Littoral Press.
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    Jane Frank: Stadium

    Looking down at my ankle is preferable.
    I’m estimating the percentage of it
    in sun versus shadow,
    thinking that ten minutes ago
    half my leg was still in soft light,
    another afternoon eked away.

    I’ve spent a lot of time in stadiums –
    I try and work out how many
    days or even years it would be –
    impassively watching goals and saves,
    trying to make conversation with people
    who’ve mistaken me
    for one of those wives that
    know all the players’ names
    and which teams they’ve come from,
    all the numb minutiae of the game.

    My glass needs filling
    but I don’t want to stand
    inside and eat mini pies,
    listen to the lady in the tight dress
    tell me that her life’s
    been transformed since
    she bought the thermomix,
    sympathise as grown men
    agonise about what might have been.

    What do you mean it’s a bit rude
    to sit texting
    when it’s a privilege to be here,
    witnessing all this at first hand?

    I need a line to the outside

    or I’ll die.

    Of boredom.

Jane Frank’s poems have appeared in Australian Poetry Journal, Writ, Uneven Floor, Yellow Chair Review, Antiphon, The Lake and elsewhere in Australia and the UK. Jane teaches a range of writing disciplines at Griffith University in south east Queensland. She has just completed a PhD examining the rise of the global Book Town Movement.
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***

    Ian C Smith: Banished to the Front

    Meteoric heroes of sport
    decorate back pages,
    their ability
    to cavort
    plus envied high wages
    thrills spectators whose dreams fell short.

    The mob disengages,
    goodwill blown, tall poppies in court,
    hubris meets front pages.

Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in , Australian Poetry Journal, New Contrast, Poetry Salzburg Review, Rabbit Journal, Two-Thirds North, The Weekend Australian,& Westerly. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.
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***

    Ed Mycue: Carnivory In The Plant Kingdom

    Eating during bankers’ hours,
    during the time others are sawing wood
    and the termites are eating it,
    hunger is first things first.  Not sex.

    Not shelter. You live, learn and still
    and all we knock on wood because
    you’re never too young to step up to the plate,
    but you have to prioritize especially
    if you are a vegetarian as big as a reindeer.

    From the get-go when you are beating
    the tom-tom for dinner you don’t shilly-shally
    or you’re so full of beans
    (though it’s no skin off your teeth).

    As for freeloaders with time passing
    for anyone who knows his onions
    those layabouts will soon learn
    a new rite of passage when they are
    deader than a doornail. OK,

    plants eat animals, animals
    eat plants and other animals, but do
    plants eat other plants? (fungi, plants?)
    Jeez louise, you say, it’s screwey louie

    as far as the eye can see. But all
    you really need to know
    is that time-flies enter the ointment:
    because if it isn’t omnivory or carnivory,
    it’s herbivory, and a herd of hippos.

Ed Mycue was born at Niagara Falls,NY, raised Dallas,TX, studied in Boston,MA, and resides in San Francisco,CA . His books: include Damage Within The Community (San Francisco)1973, Root, Route & Range: The Song Returns (Melbourne) 1979, The Singing Man My Father Gave Me (London) 1980 and Mindwalking (Seattle) 2008. He has also published an E-Book: I Am A Fact Not A Fiction 2009
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***

    Yuan Changming: twenty word idioms

    No belief without a lie
    No business without sin
    No character without an act
    No courage without rage

    No culture without a cult
    No entrance without a trance
    No Europe without a rope
    No freedom without a reed

    No friendship without an end
    No life without if
    No malady without a lady
    No manifestation without man

    No passage without a sage
    No pharmacy without harm
    No plant without a plan
    No prevention without an event

    No slaughter without laughter
    No substance without a stance
    No think without ink
    No truth without a rut

Yuan Changming grew up in rural China, began to learn English at 19, and published monographs on translation before moving to Canada. With a PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver, and has poetry appearing in Best Canadian Poetry, Best New Poems Online, London Magazine, Threepenny Review and 1109 others across 37 countries.
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